Once Upon a Time In Wonderland Will Feature a Kick-Ass Alice

This morning, the cast and creators of the Once Upon a Time spinoff series, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, took the stage at the TCA (Television Critics Association) press tour to talk about what we can expect from this season's self-contained tale.

Once Upon a Time in Wonderland was originally ordered as a 13-episode "bridge series" between seasons of Once Upon A Time. However, the network has since decided to air the series in the fall with an, as of right now, amorphous over 13, but under 22, number of episodes.

ABC President Paul Lee said that they, "fell in love" with the series and that lead to the decision to extend. "We are going to make as many [episodes] as we need to tell a complete story with a beginning, middle and end," Horowitz said. "If people like it, we'll come back and tell another adventure with these characters. The plan would be to tell a whole string of episodes in the fall, then The Quest comes on, and then we come back after that to finish out the story for the season."

"We'll be going into Wonderland," Kitsis said of what we can expect from the series opener. "We'll get a sense of the world with Alice's return and meet Jaffar and the Red Queen."

For those who are unfamiliar, the show follows Alice, a young woman who has been institutionalized for believing that she's taken a journey to a magical land that exists on the other side of a rabbit hole inhabited by, among other things, an invisible cat and a hookah smoking caterpillar.

Just as she's ready to put it all behind her, especially the painful memory of the genie she fell in love with and lost forever -- the handsome and mysterious Cyrus (Peter Gadiot) -- the sardonic Knave of Hearts (Michael Socha) and the irrepressible White Rabbit (John Lithgow) arrive to save her from a doomed fate.

The story remixes Alice in Wonderland with elements from Aladdin. Alice is, as mentioned, in search of her missing genie - with the help of a few Wonderland friends - and must confront both the Red Queen and the nefarious Jaffar (the villain from Aladdin) on her quest.

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What Can We Expect From These Versions Of The Characters:

"We never wanted her to be a damsel in distress," Kitsis said when asked how they had conceived of their version of the iconic Alice. "We wanted her to go down that rabbit hole, sword in hand, and find her man." In his address to the press, Lee promised that this would be a very "kick-ass" version of the character. Lowe agrees that she is "tough, and both mentally and physically strong."

The man in question, the genie that she's gone to rescue, is "a prisoner in his own bottle."

"What we loved about the character of a genie is you serve at the pleasure of your master," Kitsis explained. "You are somebody who watches lifetimes of people ruin their lives and the things they hold dearest because they wish it away. They're trying to find shortcuts. So we thought ‑‑ we loved the idea of a genie who thought, 'If only one day I could get free, I would be able to live that life.' And so, for us, our character of Alice had a really tough growing‑up process. And so when you see the pilot, you'll see that they kind of complete each other in a way. And we just love the idea of somebody who was curious enough as a child to follow a rabbit down a hole would love a genie who could go to many different lands."

"In the popular imagination Jaffar is the incarnation of evil," Andrews said of his character. "But we want to present the audience with something they haven't seen before. There has to be some ambiguity, because everyone has a childhood."

As to integrating Alice and Aladdin, Kitsis says it's about, "honoring what came before and then leaping off. In some ways we're still kids mixing-up our action figures. 'Darth Vader will kill you Spock!'"

"Vader couldn't kill Spock, though," countered Horowitz.

The idea, is, as with Once, we will likely be seeing archetypal moments from these characters and then watch as those tried-and-true tropes are turned in on themselves. "We have the White Rabbit, we will see the Cheshire cat, but this is our own story because Alice has never been in love with a genie before," Kitsis quipped.

As to the aforementioned Rabbit, the team says that John Lithgow brings a depth to the character that may surprise some. They also hinted that we may be hearing some more famous voices for some of the remaining characters (the Cheshire cat for example). What we will not see is anyone other than Sebastian Stan playing the Mad Hatter. "We'd move heaven and Earth to have him back," Kitsis said of Stan. Unfortunately, his full dance-card will not currently allow it.

How Does This Fit In With The "Mother" Show?:

There has been some question about how Barbara Hershey's character, Cora, on Once would play into this series, if at all.

"Cora is actually the Queen of Hearts," Kitsis said. "So the Queen of Hearts was from Wonderland, and the Red Queen (who is a different character on this series) was from Looking Glass, and we are stealing from both. But we do hope to have Barbara Hershey back in flashbacks, because this show will work very similar to the other show in that we will tell flashbacks of these characters before the present‑day story that's taking place in Wonderland."

As to the timing, Once Upon in Time in Wonderland takes place "postcurse" and concurrently with Once, within the Once universe. Alice does live in Victorian England, but it is not the Victorian England of our past. It is a fictional Victorian England of "story and character" that occurs contemporaneously with our world.

Once Upon a Time in Wonderland premieres on Thursday, October, 10 at 8PM ET/PT on ABC.